Twenty years ago, La Costa resident Angela Coppola made a name for herself by creating silk scarves printed with stained glass designs from cathedrals and sacred sites around the world.

Now, the 75-year-old entrepreneur is about to launch a new product line that draws on her long career in marketing and design and her lifelong spiritual journey.

In mid-April, she’ll debut “All You Need is Love,” a line of apparel, accessories and bedding colorfully printed with the word “Love” in 44 international languages.

“My idea,” she said, “is that if you walk down the street wearing a designer brand, it says I’m rich and I can afford to carry this brand. I thought that ‘Love’ would be a different kind of brand. You would be wrapping yourself in love and telling others that you care about your fellow human.”

Coppola said the Love product line, marketed online through her company Style Talks (styletalks.fashion), represents her company’s philosophy that words have power.

“We wanted to produce products that would help make a difference in the consciousness of the world … products that would bridge the divide between cultures and people,” she writes on her website. “We are starting with the word ‘love’ because love is the driving force that brings us all together and makes for a happier world.”

The Love products — scarves, shirts, umbrellas, totes, beach towels and more — were inspired by Coppola’s now-four-year campaign to establish a National Golden Rule Day.

Angela Coppola's new All You Need is Love line of apparel and accessories features the word "Love" in 44 languages.

Angela Coppola's new All You Need is Love line of apparel and accessories features the word "Love" in 44 languages. (Bill Wechter / San Diego Union-Tribune)

Coppola grew up in New York City with a Jewish mother and Italian father (she’s not related to filmmaker Francis Ford Coppola). Her Jewish uncles ran a high-end coat and shirt factory in the city’s garment district and she remembers being dazzled by the fashion shows her uncles would stage for store buyers.

“Fashion was in my blood,” she said. “It was the only thing I was ever really interested in growing up.”

At 18, she got a job as a secretary in the purchasing department at Revlon Inc., where her stylish clothing and industry knowledge was noticed. Three years later, she was hired as the assistant advertising manager for Fabergé, where by age 28 she’d worked her way up to the position of international creative director.

During her 20s, Coppola had her consciousness awakened in two ways. She became a feminist after learning she was being paid less than a man in the same job. And she became a lifetime spiritual seeker after attending a presentation on Hindu philosophy by Swami Satchidananda at Madison Square Garden.

Since then, she has studied and come to appreciate multiple religions, including Buddhism and Christian Science. She meditates for an hour each day, was a longtime follower of Deepak Chopra, has taken seminars at the Self-Realization Fellowship in Encinitas and enjoys watching evangelical TV preacher Joel Osteen each week.

“I believe in all paths to God because in our hearts we’re all basically one,” she said, adding that she respects all beliefs, including those of agnostics and atheists.

Bill Wechter / San Diego Union-Tribune

La Costa resident Angela Coppola, 75, is launching a new love-themed line of products in April.

La Costa resident Angela Coppola, 75, is launching a new love-themed line of products in April. (Bill Wechter / San Diego Union-Tribune)

Coppola moved to California in the early 1970s and started her own advertising agency in downtown San Francisco in 1976. At its peak, her agency had 14 employees and counted Levi-Strauss, Pacific Telesis and Crescent Jewelers among its clients. To better connect with other businesswomen in the city in 1980, she started the Professional Women’s Network, which is still active today.

Over the years, she explored other cultures as a member of the San Francisco/Shanghai Sister City Committee and she spent 12 years as the wife of the honorary consul general for Africa’s Ivory Coast.

But by 1991 she was ready to slow down and “find her bliss.”

“I was looking for where my heart was,” she said. “My strong suit had always been in marketing and creating, not in managing people. So in 1991 I closed my agency to pursue my dream of writing and painting.”

She spent the next couple of years attending art school but eventually needed to go back to work after a divorce. Opportunity knocked in 1998, when a friend invited her to dinner at the upscale French Laundry restaurant in the Napa Valley town of Yountville.

Along for the trip that day was the dean of San Francisco’s Grace Cathedral and his wife. They asked Coppola if she had any ideas for items they could sell in the church’s gift shop. She lived just two blocks away from the stately Episcopalian cathedral and on one of her regular nocturnal neighborhood walks, inspiration struck.

“One night at 11 o’clock I was walking by the cathedral and I looked up as its rose stained glass window was all illuminated from the inside and a little inner voice said, ‘oh my gosh, that would make the most beautiful scarf.’”

That was the beginning of Sacred Silks, which produces scarves printed with stained glass and other designs from churches, temples and mosques she has visited around the world.

Her scarf and wall-hanging business — written up in the San Francisco Chronicle and San Jose Mercury News as well as several business magazines — has since expanded into museums. She’s created scarves for The Smithsonian, the Portland Museum of Art and many others.

Coppola said there was one thing she noticed over the years about her religiously themed scarf sales: Unlike her own winding spiritual journey, her buyers never stray from choosing designs from their own religion.

“The Christians were always buying the Christian designs, the Hindis were buying mandalas and the Jews were buying Jewish designs,” she said. “I wondered if I could find a design that would unify everyone and make a difference.”

The answer, she discovered, was the universal language of love. With designers Sarah Duffy Hollins and Garrett Donahue, she came up with the “All You Need is Love” pattern.

Mixed with hand-drawn hearts and stars, the word is spelled out in different languages and alphabets that include Swahili, Turkish, Arabic, Punjabi, Tagalog, Javanese, Nepali, Japanese, Norwegian, Welsh, Hindi and many more.

The Love products range in price from $15 to $60 for scarves, totes, duvet covers, T-shirts and ties. The highest-price items are silk satin women’s shirts priced at $90. They’ll be manufactured in China this winter, with deliveries beginning April 10.

Still to come, she said, are a love-themed blog featuring art, poetry and philosophy, as well as new product lines promoting kindness and compassion. She hopes her products inspire a true international movement.

“I think it will help people be kinder and more conscious. It will be a reminder,” she said. “When I put on this scarf, I know I’m wrapping myself in love.”